[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] FOSS shame

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 11:31:27PM +0000, Carl Eugen Hoyos wrote:
> Michael Niedermayer <michaelni <at> gmx.at> writes:
> 
> > > > heres my current try:
> > > > --- shame	(revision 411)
> > > > +++ shame	(working copy)
> > > > @@ -6,6 +6,9 @@
> > > >  This is a list of projects or companies violating FFmpeg's license. The
> list
> > > >  is part of an effort to get them to comply with the licensing terms by
> shaming
> > > >  them in public.
> > > > +We have consciously chosen not to include <i>not for profit free
> software projects</i> as we
> > > > +belive that thouse who give their work to the world for free should not
> be shamed
> > > > +on such lists.
> 
> The reason that I am against this is not that I want to put any open-source
> project on the list, but that
> 1) I am convinced that it is very difficult to define "not for profit free
> software projects"

> 2) What if a project that originally was not on shame decides to put some ads on
> its homepage? Would that mean the license violation depends on things totally
> unrelated?

for that "what if case"
no, they violated the license before as well, they just wherent on the list.

Its like about people doing fan fiction of star trek, as long as they do it
"not for profit" the trademark & copyright owners ignore it, that doesnt
make it legally more or less ok i think but IANAL. Of course you now could
argue its legally ok to do these things either way and maybe it is ...


[...]
> > I dont complain to people because i have some legal basis to do it.
> > For me there first needs to
> > be something done by them that i consider seriously wrong.
> > 
> > Taking someone elses hard work and pretending its ones own is seriously
> > wrong.
> > Also taking some one elses hard work and selling it for a profit without
> > giving that person any share at all is also something i feel isnt right.
> > And last, obviously improving someones FOSS work and not giving these
> > improvents to the worlds public under FOSS again is also something i
> > consider wrong.
> > OTOH, not including the unchanged source of ffmpeg, including a pathset
> > including the LGPL license text, including the wrong LGPL version, just saying
> > under LGPL, 
> 
> > or linking to some non free codecs alone
> 
> Are you sure?
> (Nearly) all of the current offenders would be able to fix their issues if we
> all agree about this. I thought we would at least require them to dynamically
> load such libraries at least.

the current offenders are AFAIK largely doing commercial scale copyright
infrigment for profit. They are _evil_ and i want them to comply to the last
letter of the (L)GPL.
And if their product depends on some non free codec and they link some GPL in
they must provide source of the non free codec under GPL. How they link is
irrelevant. With LGPL instead of GPL they could do it under specific
circumstances.

For not for profit FOSS offenders, i dont mind them linking in non free
codecs. Thats my personal decission about the part i have copyright on.
Like its my decission who uses my computer, i can say ok to someone with
blue eyes and say no to someone with green eyes.
Of course any single copyright holder of ffmpeg could complain and go after
these FOSS projects if he wants.

What bothers me so much about commercial projects is they make shitloads
of money selling code i (and others) wrote and giving neither patches
back nor donating any of that money to the authors. While some of these
authors have only little more money than what they need to pay for
dayly expenses like food, isp, ...
It does not feel correct to me honestly.


> 
> > are just not something
> > that i mind anyone doing. But if someone is doing something that i
> > consider seriously wrong then i surely will use all these little things to
> > fight them.
> > 
> > I dont like the kind of "zero tolerance" thinking where one puts everyone
> > on the shame list because they violate the text without violating the
> > spirit of the text.
> 
> >From my POV, this has nothing to do with zero tolerance: We need roundup issues
> for every possible violations, without it, it will be impossible to track them.
> I don't think I ever put a program on shame where any doubt about the violation
> (including the points you made above) was still possible, and I always agreed
> not to put them on shame if I was asked to.
> (I am just a bit allergic if somebody claims he did everything correctly whereas
> he knew about the violation for a long time.)

ive no problem at all with listing everyone without exception on roundup.

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

If you think the mosad wants you dead since a long time then you are either
wrong or dead since a long time.
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